


Freedom in a Hunter's Skies

by spirrum



Series: The Falconer [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Period Drama AU, contains minor character death, early 1900s, pre and post WW1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4641057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirrum/pseuds/spirrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite a somewhat shambling social reputation, Malcolm Hawke’s eldest daughter inherits the family estate upon his death. But a swiftly churning rumour mill becomes the least of Marian's problems, when War comes knocking on her door. </p><p>And then there’s the matter of the neighbour’s mysterious falconer…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom in a Hunter's Skies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DancingMantis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancingMantis/gifts).



> Part of a fic gift swap with DancingMantis, thank you for helping kick my butt into gear! I've had this in the works for a while, and it's finally finished. It's a idea that was meant to be shorter but that grew legs and ran off, as my ideas are sometimes wont to do. It's also a product of my shameless love of period dramas. 
> 
> I hope you'll all enjoy!

_1913_

She finds him by the stables one cold morning, the frost and the white mist on the moors a cover of lace and the sky awash with dawn’s roses. It’s too early for anyone of a sensible mind to be awake, and these are her hours, her gentle solitude, and so his presence is an unexpected thing.

“Oh,” she says, slightly out of breath from her run from the house. Were her mother alive she would have pitched a fit at her state of dress, but as it is Marian has no mind for embarrassment. “Hello.”

He’s not dressed to be a visitor, and she doesn’t recognize him as a neighbour, but then he nods his head in the way of a servant, shoulders bent and eyes lowered. He wears his hair long and gathered at his neck, white as the late season’s frost, and it draws her eyes and claims what remains of her breath.

He appears surprised at her arrival, but he doesn’t move to speak, and to fill the growing space of discomfort Hawke roots around for conversation. “Good morning,” she tries, with the conduct becoming of a Mistress, albeit a Mistress with her hem covered in mud and her hair still in sleep’s tangles.

“Lady Hawke,” is all he says, and she pretends the title doesn’t make her bristle. A hissing cat she is not, however much Carver teases.

She spares a surreptitious glance around them, wondering where he’s come from. “Are you from the area?”

He nods. “Your closest neighbour is the Master of my house, my lady.” 

The title puts a wrinkle between her brows, but she bears it with enough silent consternation to make her late mother proud. “Ah, yes. Mister Danarius.”

Another nod, too low for her liking, but she makes no mention of it. The servants’ gossip does not paint the prettiest picture of his Master, but far be it for her to place her faith in kitchen hearsay.

She considers him closely, but if he finds the attention unwelcome he doesn’t let on. And he doesn’t move to leave, seeming strangely at ease in the pale morning light, for a man who is arguably trespassing. 

She makes note of the glove then, and her surprise is a pleasant trickle in a weary soul. “You’re a falconer?”

That insufferable nod again, but there’s a twinge of impudence behind it, clear as a twinkle in his eyes.

“Your name?” she tries then, wielding her own daring in turn, tongue like a whip and entirely unsuited her position. And when he looks at her there’s surprise in his eyes, and she knows – oh, she knows he’d expected something else. Something far more polite, no doubt.

But, “Fenris,” he says at length, and much to her surprise, giving the name with a wariness that makes her feel as though he’s handing her a weapon.

 _Strange,_ she thinks, but then she can’t exactly boast normalcy herself, though Marian can at least say she attempts it. _Most of the time_. “Not very talkative, are you, Fenris?”

He offers a raised brow, the way a gentleman might, over dinner. But they’re not at dinner, though she’s far more intrigued by this display than that of any suitor in the years that have passed since her presentation to society.   

“The birds do not speak,” he says then, when she thinks he’s decided to remain silent, and there’s an underlying humour there that makes her wonder if he’s quite as grave as he seems.

“Well I’m no bird,” she retorts, a little glibly perhaps, but she finds herself wanting to draw laughter from that severe mouth. It’s a strange compulsion, the sort that’s only gotten her into trouble in the past, but it’s the first thrill she’s felt since her mother’s passing – one that even her long walks have not been able to inspire.

It’s not quite a smile that graces his mouth, but there’s a ghost of mirth there, in the sharp lines of his lips. He’s looking up towards the sky now, and she follows the line of his gaze, eyes squinting in the grey light.

A shadow above the treetops, and the lift of his hand speaks of an ease that can’t be taught, and she follows it with her eyes, strangely delighted. Skin too dark for the northern climate and hair too pale for his years, there’s a wildness to him that makes her remember warm summers running on the moors, beneath a sky that seemed to stretch forever.

The bird comes to land on his outstretched arm, dark wings spread wide, and Marian finds herself –

Captured.

 

* * *

 

Those first few weeks of their acquaintance he’ll call her nothing but _Lady Hawke_ , for all that she’s given him her name to use, well aware that it’s ignoring social custom, which he seems far more eager to maintain than she. But she tries, to the best of her ability, to wiggle her way past the sense of propriety that keeps him so aloof.

That first day she asks him to teach her – about the birds, about falconry (about himself, but she doesn’t tell him this, though from her gently prodding questions she suspects he knows).

At first he refuses, but “I’ll speak to your Master, if it’s a problem,” she assures him, though she has no pressing desire to visit Mister Danarius, but if it will ease his mind she will put on an act to make even her late mother proud. And with her gentle prodding he relents, though he doesn’t ask her to speak to his Master, and it becomes an unspoken agreement that they don’t speak of their meetings, behind the stables at dawn’s first light.

Those first hesitant mornings he brings a different bird. The first is a kestrel, sleek of feather and with dark, inquisitive eyes, and she loves it immediately.

“This is Pip,” he introduces, with a flicker of humour in his green eyes. “Do not let its size fool you.”

“I won’t,” she’s quick to say, because she’s been judged her whole life, too, though she doesn’t tell him that. Marian Hawke, as tall as her brother, not near as fair and gentle as her sister. Odd and gangly, and with a laugh that carries. Not a suitable heir to house and fortune, but that hadn’t stopped her father. 

She reaches to touch the bird, slides gentle knuckles along the smooth feathers, and feels an odd thrill at the docility in its calm and quiet acceptance of her touch. But there’s a light in its eyes she recognizes as her own, and she knows docility is a necessity.

She doesn’t ask to try the glove, and he doesn’t offer. Instead they spend the morning, conversing quietly of bland and simple things, as Pip circles high above their heads. She wants to ask – about him, about his life, but there is her mother’s voice, for once, a stern reprimand at the back of her mind that she’s too reckless, too over-eager for a woman in her position. And so she keeps her questions to herself, but her disappointment aside, she’s pleased when he still shows up, the morning after.

The bird on his arm now is a peregrine falcon, he tells her. A sturdy hunter, and he’s fond of this one, she can tell. Perhaps it’s the calm with which it sits on his arm, less jittery than the kestrel.

She’s about to ask for its name, when he holds a glove towards her, and she blinks – she hadn’t noticed he’d brought an additional one. When she doesn’t move to take it, he proffers it again, humour winking in his eyes. Oh, he’s aware she’d like to try, that much is clear, and for a moment she’s feels stubborn enough to deny him, just for the sake of it.

But intrigue blossoms with childlike elation, and so she reaches to accept the glove.

“Like this?” she asks, tugging it over her hand. It feels strange, over-large but durable, and when he takes her hand she lets him.

The falcon settles onto her arm without fuss, and she knows why he’s brought this one, this particular morning. It had been his intention all along to let her hold it.

Something swells behind her breast, but she contains her strange glee, settling her gaze on the bird instead.

“Herne,” he says, stroking tanned fingers along the feathers. “He takes easily to new hands. My Master often uses him to entertain guests.”

Her smile falls, but the bird looks on, unperturbed. “Oh.”

Fenris is looking at the bird. “Rebellion has its price, but so does compliance,” is all he says. He gives the feathers another stroke, and when he turns his gaze to Marian next, the shadows are gone from his face. “Would you care to try?”

There’s a moment where she’s not quite sure what he’s asking – if there’s more behind the offer than what he says outright, and her tongue feels too large for her mouth, but she nods, regardless.

Fenris says very little, but his long fingers come to hold her wrist, guiding her gloved hand, and when he releases her, the falcon takes flight.

The sudden pressure of its ascent nearly topples her, but she catches herself in time, hair falling into her eyes, and she would have cussed but for the delight that tears from her lips, her laughter light and airy and startling in the quiet.

It comes back, through some awareness beyond her understanding, and when it lands on her arm Fenris is there to assist her. Made reckless by the sight of its flight, Marian lets it fly again, and feels wonderment when it returns once more. And Fenris watches, quiet and calm as the morning.

“Tell me something,” she says, when he later makes to depart. The sun has risen above the treetops, and her siblings will be expecting her back. His Master too, no doubt.

He frowns. “I – don’t follow.”

She’s seized by boldness. “Something about yourself. Where are you from? You don’t talk like a northerner.”

He offers a look. “Neither do you,” he says, and – it’s the first time he’s not tacked _my lady_ onto the end of his sentence. And by the look in his eyes, he’s not misspoken.

Her grin is quick and clever. “So is it to be a secret, then?”

Fenris merely smiles, and she doesn’t push, and when he departs there is an odd contentment that follows the sight of him, his tall shadow disappearing amidst the trees like something out of local legend.

She spares a passing thought to whether or not he just might be some fae creature come to charm her away, and amuses herself with the image for the remainder of the day. And when she sleeps she dreams of a feathered cloak to catch the wind, and eyes bright and ever-watching, green as the moor’s moss.

 

* * *

 

For their third meeting he brings her a hawk, large and regal where it’s perched on his arm.

“Diana,” he introduces. “My Master’s most beloved.” And there is something dark in the way he speaks the words, but she curbs her tongue. Tact is not her greatest virtue, but she’s perceptive enough to know when to steer clear of certain subjects.

“She’s beautiful.” And she is, and it doesn’t take long before Marian has found her favourite, in the sharp cleave of her dark wings through the air. And when they meet next, it’s the hawk he brings. She wears the glove, comfortable on her hand now, but she finds she doesn’t mind watching him, back straight and arm lifted, a sharp whistle singing on the air, to resonate within her.

But when she retreats to the house at the end of every meeting, there’s a restlessness she can’t shake – some young, girlish fancy that makes her fingers twitch against the spine of her book, and she can’t sit still. Some afternoons she goes for walks, not to the moors but across the property, along the line of trees that stretch towards the road, until she can catch a glimpse of it – Danarius’ manor, a pale structure of white brick against the green of the fields at its back. A short hour’s walk and she’ll be skirting the edge of the orchard that sprawls before the property. 

She doesn’t make the trek – doesn’t know what it would accomplish, other than an uncomfortable conversation with a man her father had once described as a pompous fop. Or perhaps it will prompt the start of a new rumour – that Marian Hawke now loiters like a vagabond. 

But she wonders, as she turns to make her way back towards the house, about him, the falconer with a diction too fine for a servant, but an accent she can’t place. Intrigue makes her look back, and hope makes her watch the skies for the sign of wings, but when she finds nothing but an empty orchard she turns fully, gaze firmly set on her own estate and fingers fisted in her skirts.  

Another day, when she’s not cowed by the thought that he’d turn her away – that he’d claim her a stranger, if she were to approach. There’s something odd about the large house, owned by a Master but with gardens barren of all life but the ripened weight pulling on the branches of the apple trees. 

She mulls over the thought, and why he’d chosen to fly his birds on her grounds when his Master’s estate is twice its size. But she tucks the thought away for later, perhaps when Fenris is present to disprove her suspicions, or simply cast light on her uncertainties. For now, she’ll allow him his peace.

And his distance.

 

* * *

 

“Where is it you go every morning?” her sister inquires at breakfast one day. Sunlight pours through the windows, spilling gold over the crisp white tablecloth and glinting off the silverware. 

“Out,” Marian evades, with less skill than she ought to manage, but the question has, regrettably, caught her off guard. “And about.”

“The moors aren’t _that_ exciting,” Carver mutters, dourly from behind his newspaper.

“And you would know, wouldn’t you little brother? Not having set foot on them since you sank to your knees that time, when was it? Ten years ago?” The lift of her teacup to her lips is a teasing gesture, and bless his heart, but her little brother _pouts_.

Bethany is frowning, Leandra’s Frown, and Marian knows there’s going to be a Conversation, soon. And she wonders what her sister will say, if she tells her.

She wonders what she’ll tell her, if she asks.

The thought sits in her mind all through breakfast, a strange warmth, and though she’s far too old to revel in secrecy, she finds pleasure in this little ounce of privacy. 

_So is it to be a secret, then?_

She smiles her own answer against the rim of her teacup, and wonders what’s he’s doing now.

 

* * *

 

“So, word is you’ve got an admirer, Hawke.”

The glass stills by her lip, cool against her skin. The smell of the brandy rises, reminiscent of her mother and cold nights before a crackling fire, and she considers it no small feat when she only pauses for a moment before downing the contents.

“And whose word would that be?”

Varric grins – the grin that tells her there’s a story, and that he’s most likely the one making it up, from whatever hearsay has crawled its way up through the floorboards of his pub. A true American rogue, as he’d have the village believe, no scruples in his heart, but Marian knows of the coins that makes it into small hands at the workhouse, and the sanctuary offered those who ask for it.  

“Oh, you know. Word about the village.” But he doesn’t make her wait long before he adds, “And word that won’t make it out of this room.” He raises his own glass. “You’re welcome.”

She snorts. “I won’t ask.”

“As you shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t what?” Isabela sidles up, the clink of gold and some rich, foreign smell settling between them as she takes a seat, swinging long legs over the bench and making a grab for Marian’s glass.

“Ask what happens to rumours that find their way into Varric’s hands,” she answers, plucking her drink out of the sailor’s grip before Isabela can take a swig.

“I _like_ rumours. What have you got this time, Varric?”

Her warning look is ignored. “Hawke has an admirer.”

Isabela frowns. “Isn’t that old news?”

“Not Blondie – some other guy.” With a nod in Marian’s direction, he adds, “Though there is an offer there, you know,” he says, with a meaningful look. “Him being a doctor and everything. Not that you need the money, but it would keep the rumours off your back. And he’s a decent guy.” He shrugs. “You could do a lot worse in these parts.”

She imagines the man in question – his smiling eyes and tousled hair. The cat slinking at his heels whenever she visits the clinic. A kind man, and far better than she deserves, were she to take a husband. But marriage has not been a requirement so far, and she won’t exploit a man like Anders just to quench the thirst of a gossiping village.  

When she hasn’t said anything, Varric grins. “Or maybe we’re talking about more than just an admirer?”

She’s tempted to ask him – if anyone would know anything about Danarius’ strange falconer it would be Varric. And if he doesn’t already, he’d be her best bet at finding out whatever she’d wish to know, with his numerous contacts and strings to pull. But asking would first require _telling_ , and she doesn’t even know if she wants to share that, yet, or at all – the calm, grey quiet and the sound of wings rustling the grass. The warmth beside her, and dew soaking into the hem of her dress. 

But she looks at them now, two of her closest friends, who’ve never so much as batted an eye at her unmarried state, Marian wonders how much it gains her to keep it to herself. It’s not a torrid romance, and even if it were, word of it wouldn’t reach past Varric’s doorstep.

“Oh?” Isabela asks, reading her decision on her face. “I hope this is sordid.”

Marian laughs. “I don’t know about that, but your imagination will fill in the blanks when needed, I’m sure.”

The sailor grins. “Oh, you bet.”

A sigh pulls loose of her breast, and she takes a moment to consider her words – how they will sound, spoken out loud. She doesn’t know if she’s reading too much into their visits, his long fingers lingering against hers, but she figures if there’s anyone to ask, it would be these two.

“Well…”

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, their advice is of little help.

Isabela tells her to go for it – that she’s a modern woman and that she’s already said to hell with tradition when she inherited her father’s estate, so why not do a tumble in the hay with the handsome neighbour’s falconer?

Varric, surprisingly, advocates caution, claiming that he’s heard more than enough about Danarius to offer even his gardener a sidelong glance. Perhaps it’s a ruse? But when asked what he could possibly want to achieve by having one of his servants teach her about falconry, he hadn’t been able to offer much of an answer, aside from the expected, which was that it could be an elaborate ploy by his employer to ask for her hand in marriage, and by extension, her estate and fortune. Not a fae then, as she’d entertained, but a pawn.

It all comes down to marriage, as usual, but she finds herself unwilling to consider any ulterior motives when she meets him next, to find a small smile gracing his face. An earnest thing, prompted by the sight of her, and so she nudges Varric’s warning to the back of her mind, where her fretting fingers can’t reach it. She’ll ask him herself, one day.

She hopes what he’ll give her will be the truth.

 

* * *

 

Spring becomes summer, and the cold mist relents, to give them warmer mornings. Her duties to her family keep her grounded, but the birds fly in her stead, high above the trees, though their freedom is as imagined as her own.

Her sister is to be presented, and Carver has set his eyes on the pretty girl at the post office, and between the two of them there’s little time left for sneaking off to morning visits. But they make do; the mornings she does not show he does not question her about, and when he is not there to meet her first she takes to walking on the moors, to keep her mind occupied. A whole year passes in this fashion, marked by their sparse meetings. Some days he does not bring a bird, and they spend the hours talking. She brings books, when she learns he does not read well, and her challenge is as clear as his, though she doesn’t offer a hawk but words bound in leather.

She’s Lady Hawke for that year, though she aims to knock the courtesy from his speech with the same amount of stubbornness he shows in retaining it. But as autumn approaches once more there is a glibness to his responses that makes _Lady Hawke_ sound far less proper than it should, and these are the nights she will spend awake, turning his words over in her mind, tasting them on her own tongue. Winter turns the house quiet and their meetings rarer, and she stalks the corridors, yearning for respite to the frantic thundering of her heart.

“It’s not the doctor,” she tells Carver when prodded. And though his frown has turned colder with the stirrings of unease beyond their borders, there’s a teasing light in his eyes when he asks that makes her want to shout that _yes, yes it is, and I will be happy, fancy that!,_ if only to keep him young and foolish, just for a little while longer.  

She can’t tell him the truth, but she doesn’t push her denial when he leaves her with a look that says he very much thinks it is the doctor. And when Bethany offers a knowing smile over breakfast, Marian returns it.

 

* * *

 

_1_ _914_

Winter gives way to spring like the land releasing a long held breath, and the snow on the moors melts under the cold sun. She visits Varric’s pub, dragging her frock through the ice and the mud, and finds that with each year she spends less time worrying about the opinions of others, though lingering looks trail at her back wherever she walks.

“Read the paper today, Hawke?” he asks, voice low with a seriousness that doesn’t suit him, and when she shakes her head he pushes it towards her. “Doesn’t look good.”

Her sigh is loosed with a snort as her eyes skim the page. “Does it ever?”

“Not getting pessimistic on us, Varric?” Isabela croons, bending over Marian’s shoulder to read. A groan rolls off her tongue. “ _Politics_. I’m going to need another drink to get through this.” She waves her glass in Varric’s direction.

“I rather like politics,” Merrill chirps, cheerfully despite the mood that’s settled over the room.

Isabela moves to take a seat, glass balanced precariously between slender fingers, patting Merrill’s shoulder with the other. “And bless your heart for it, kitten, but this isn’t about voting rights. Just old men arguing with their di—”

“Sounds like every suffrage rally I’ve been to,” Marian adds, folding the paper. “And you’re right about needing a drink. Varric?”  

The door opens, allowing the smell of spring rain and wet earth to seep in from outside, and admitting a tall woman in riding boots and a man’s trousers, russet hair soaked and curling from the rain.

“Aveline,” Varric greets. “How’s the husband hunt? Poor sod caught on to what you’re trying to do yet?”

“Varric,” she offers in return, and with a look that speaks of a patience thinning already before she’d walked in. “How’s the smuggling going?”

“I’ll take that as a _no_ , then,” Varric laughs, pushing a glass towards her. “On the house.”

“Isn’t everything on the house?” Isabela asks, eying her now empty glass.

“ _You_ have a tab,” Varric informs her.

“Well, shit.”

Merrill perks up. “Do I have a tab, Varric?”

“You can pay me in eggs later, Daisy. Or whatever else you’ve got on that farm.”

“Can I pay in eggs?”

Marian pulls her glass out of Isabela’s reach. “Where would you even get eggs?”

“I wouldn’t ask that if I were you,” Aveline says, before emptying her own, and gesturing to Varric for another. Isabela only grins, and it lures a smile from Marian, too, growing wider as Merrill asks if she’s missed something.

“So,” Isabela says, lone syllable rolling across her tongue. “Donnic. Tell me about that.”

She doesn’t think she imagines the slight flush in Aveline’s freckled cheeks. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on,” Marian hears herself say, for once glad to not be on the receiving end of the same questions.

Aveline sighs, but she can tell the moment she relents, fingers pressed against the polished counter with uncharacteristic nervousness. And then she talks – brusquely stuttered words at first, of a courtship she isn’t quite sure exists, as far as anyone but herself is concerned. But with another drink in her belly the edge disappears, leaving room for an almost girlish uncertainty that Marian recognizes as her own, though they’re neither of them girls.

She doesn’t bring up Fenris, even when her thoughts begin to drift, as Aveline questions Merrill of just what sort of flowers she grows in her gardens. The newspaper sits, forgotten on the countertop, and between the conversation and the drinks it’s almost enough to forget about the world that looms beyond the pub’s door – the whispers of the village, and the unease that sits in every printed word, to stain her fingers black.

 

* * *

 

Things change, that summer. War rings with its tolling bells through once-calm fields, shaking the populace from its complacent slumber. The papers teem with the news and for weeks it’s all she reads, until she takes to asking Bodahn not to bring her the paper with her tea.  

Carver enlists with enthusiasm, eager to serve the Crown and eager to get out into the world, beyond the endless moors of his childhood. The summer flowers still flourish in the garden the day they see him off to start his training. 

“Be careful,” Bethany says, and tucks one of their mother’s embroidered handkerchiefs into his uniform pocket, despite his protests. And for a moment, with his small pout, Marian thinks he looks too young for war, but she keeps the words to herself, knowing that they won’t be well received. And she doesn’t want them to part on bad terms.

“Don’t get killed,” she warns instead, only half-joking, and the stern nod he gives her in return promises a caution that she wants so desperately to believe. There’s so much of their father in his straight-backed posture, waiting for the train to arrive with the sun’s first light slanting off his dark hair.

“You’ll write,” their sister orders, when he’s about to step aboard. “As often as you can.”

He looks sufficiently exasperated, but accepts her kiss with a grimace. Marian refrains from ruffling his carefully made hair.

“Goodbye, little brother,” she says instead. They’ve never had the easy communication he’s shared with his twin, though they are more alike. But because they are alike she doesn’t have to speak a world’s worth of words to see him off – she can tell he hears them, in her quiet farewell.

“I’ll probably be back before they send me over,” he says, for Bethany’s benefit more than her own, as the train begins to roll away from the station. They watch the dark smoke rise towards the pale skies, a foreboding sight that stays with her throughout the day, and they don’t move to walk back to the house until the train and their brother is lost to them against the green of the quiet countryside.

 

* * *

 

It’s been two days since her brother’s departure, when they meet again. The night has brought a shower of rain, and the air carries the loamy smell of wet earth and green things, when she rounds the corner to the stables to find him watching the skies.

“Alone today?” she asks, even as she spies the glove. She wonders which bird he’s brought.

“I am rarely alone,” Fenris tells her, though something about the way he says it makes her pause. There are questions on her tongue _– a wife? Children?_

_A lover?_

But she can’t make herself ask – she suspects she won’t be able to properly mask what she’s really thinking, the impending disappointment that lurks behind the words, as she imagines his answer.  

He gives her a look then, green eyes bright with a mirth she doesn’t expect. “The birds are good company.”

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling, and wonders not for the first time, if his teasing is intentional. There are aspects of his character too severe for her to hinge her faith on it, but she can’t dismiss the notion entirely – not with his rare bouts of humour, and the shadows of smiles at the corners of her vision.

He lifts his arm then, and she looks to the sky to find Diana descending towards them, talons outstretched and wings unfurled, and the sight, though no longer novel, still steals her breath.

She’s tempted to leave all thoughts of the war for this meeting, but there’s uncertainty nagging at the back of her mind (she won’t call it fear, because if she gives in to fear, it will be all she’ll think about).

“Will you enlist?”

She doesn’t mean for the question to slip out quite so callously, and she can tell he didn’t expect it, from the raise of his brows. She swallows, lips pressing together to keep from blurting anything else.

Fenris looks at her then, and she can’t help but wonder if he’s gauging her. It’s a hunter’s gaze, but she doesn’t feel hunted, only – watched.

“No,” he says at length, and the word is not near as perfunctory as he no doubt attempts to make it sound. “My Master – Danarius made it so it would not be required of me.”

Marian frowns. Nothing about him suggests he’d be unfit to enlist. In fact, he strikes her a prime candidate, strong and hale. But she doesn’t ask, though the questions burn in her chest now, questions about his Master, and his reasons for keeping him.

“My brother just left,” she says, to change the subject, and the path of her thoughts. “Two days ago, to start his training.”

Fenris nods, and something crosses his face – guilt, she thinks. Anger, perhaps. It’s hard to tell with a man so guarded. She wants to ask, suddenly, if he’d rather enlist – if he resents his employer for keeping him behind. So many questions, but she doesn’t ask any of them.

Instead she reaches a hesitant hand towards the hawk, and is relieved when her fingers don’t tremble against the soft feathers. She chances a glance up at Fenris, but finds him watching the bird, expression unreadable, and she marvels at the ease with which he allows her close, now. They are far from strangers, but their proximity now is more than that of polite acquaintances, or even friends. If anyone should see, word would travel too fast for Varric to stamp it out.

The reckless thought that _she wouldn’t mind_ grabs hold of her with surprising force, and her hand stills against Diana’s feathers.

“Everything alright?”

She still feels that reckless pull as she looks up to meet his questioning look, and she wonders not for the first time, what he’s thinking – of her and their meetings. Questions he would no doubt answer if she dared asked them, but she can’t get the words off her tongue, sticking to the roof of her mouth with a stubborn persistence she recognizes as fear.

At length, she nods. “Just – thinking. A lot has happened.”

Not a lie, but it’s not the truth, either, and she can tell by the slight crease between his brows that he doesn’t buy it. But he doesn’t pry – he never pries, polite to a fault and it almost makes her want to scream, but she doesn’t, and so they remain.  

They don’t talk more of the war that morning, and they part ways long before the sun has climbed towards its noon mark. She watches him walk towards the trees, and wonders if the war will make things different between them. She’d heard her father speak once, of war’s penchant of breaching social barriers, though she suspects he’d been referring to those of the soldiers on the battlefield, and not those left behind to tend to quiet houses.

And she thinks of his Master, and Fenris’ reluctance to prolong their meetings past noon, and finds with a heavy heart that war might change a great many things, but that this will not be one of them.

 

* * *

 

_1916_

The most peculiar thing about war, Marian finds, is the everyday life of those who remain.

Food becomes scarce, but their family has never been one for grandeur – not since the Amells, before her mother ran off with her father. Adapting isn’t hard, and whatever goods they’re in need of Varric procures, and she’s long since stopped asking how.

They manage, and life moves on. She goes for walks on the moors, and drinks at the pub. She attends Aveline’s wedding, and the feast that follows. Carver visits, sporadically and too often without prior word, but they take their small joys where they can find them. There are no suitors inquiring about her sister – they’ve all gone off to join the war effort, but Bethany keeps busy. Anders’ clinic becomes a place of convalescence for injured soldiers, and her sister helps where help is needed.

Then one day – one staggeringly ordinary day – a letter arrives, delivered by hand to her door by a uniformed solider, and she knows the contents before she’s even pried it open.  

It begins with _Lady Marian Hawke_ , in a fine and decisive pen, the words elegant where they cut across the page, the ink sharp and black. She skims the contents, once, twice. Finds her brother’s name–  

_A fine young man. A credit to the Crown._

Her hands are shaking, and she reads the words four, five times, before her eyes move further down, and more words leap to take their place.

_Lost in France. No body to reclaim._

A whole paragraph follows that she doesn’t take in – doesn’t even see what the words say. She doesn’t take in anything until the fine stamp, and the signature at the bottom.

_My greatest condolences._

_Corporal Jean-Marc Stroud._

Her heart sits in her throat, but the tears won’t come. Even as her sister’s sobs echo through the corridors towards the sitting room, her own grief is a hollow thing, and it feels like her chest will cave in from the pressure.

It’s not until she’s making arrangements for the funeral that it really strikes her – that her brother isn’t coming home, even to be buried. _No body to reclaim._ But even now her tears are quiet, solitary companions, and she carries them without shame, her hands kept busy even as her vision blurs.

She doesn’t know what else to do.

 

* * *

 

There are flowers from Aveline’s wedding still decorating the small village chapel when they gather for the funeral, and the quiet drone of the vicar’s voice goes beyond her. Bethany’s hand is a tight grip in her own, but her sister doesn’t weep now, their mother’s stubborn grace in the lift of her chin as she stares ahead, towards the empty coffin.   

Marian spots him when they’re exiting the chapel, headed for the pub. He stands some ways off, under the large fir by the gravestones. He’s not dressed for a funeral, but his presence has something clamping down over her heart, and for a moment she can’t breathe.

But Fenris merely nods, a quiet condolence in the dip of his head, before he turns to walk away, and an impulse grabs her to call after him. She doesn’t even spare a thought to how it would look if she did, shouting across the chapel grounds, but she can’t find her voice to do it.

A single moment has passed, and he’s gone. She hasn’t so much as paused in her step, and when Bethany steers her towards The Hanged Man Marian doesn’t protest. There are too many things on her mind for her to focus properly on any one of them, and when Varric pushes a glass of scotch into her hand, any and all thoughts of Fenris are drowned by the drink.

 

* * *

 

She regrets not calling after him two days later, when he announces that he’s leaving.

“America?”

The word escapes, revealing more of her disbelief than she’d intended, but for once she doesn’t have a mind to over-think her emotions.

Fenris nods, a solemn gesture that says more thanhis quiet words. “We leave in the morning.”

So soon _– too soon_ , she wants to say, but holds her tongue this time, but she’s sure her expression gives her thoughts away, regardless.

“Master Danarius owns property in New York,” he continues, when she hasn’t spoken. He doesn’t have to tell her – has no obligation to explain, but he does, and she doesn’t know what to make of the information.

“How long?” she asks then, when she can’t decide what else to ask.

He doesn’t answer right away, and she knows from his silence that he has no clear answer. And worse, why.

“However long the war lasts,” he says, after a pause, as though it helps – as though they’re not talking of an indefinite period of time, two years into a war that shows no sign of ending. “Perhaps longer.”

 _Stay_ , the word waits, ready to leap, but she doesn’t let it. “Oh,” is what she says instead, before she clears her throat. “Well. Best of luck on your journey, then. I hear it’s quite the voyage.” It’s a pathetic attempt as far as farewells go, but it’s all she can manage, unable to find a middle ground between amicable carelessness and outright begging him not to leave. 

He looks at her then, and there’s something on his face now – an expression that bears none of the polite complacency she’s so often witnessed. Instead there’s something desperate in the press of his brow, and for a moment – a brief, staggering moment of reckless, foolish _hope_ – Marian wonders if he will kiss her.

But then his eyes soften, and whatever he’d been thinking, it’s not a thought he chooses to pursue. “Stay safe,” he tells her instead.  

And – something snaps; that brash impulse she’s been holding at bay pushes her forward, and when he turns to leave her fingers shoot forward to grip his wrist.

“I–” she begins, and stops, fear cutting her words off at the first syllable. Fenris doesn’t pull his hand from her grasp, and doesn’t move to leave, and if she wants to say something – _do something, anything_ – now is the time. Some young and long forgotten part of her considers the urge to pull him down, to breathe into a kiss that will ask him to stay even if she can’t find the words. 

But the years have made a coward of her heart, and so “I hope you’ll write?” is what she finally asks. “I know you’ve been practicing. And this is…certainly an opportunity.”

Something settles in his eyes – acceptance, and when he draws his hand from hers it slips from her grip without resistance. He’s not smiling, but then neither is she, and when he nods his head she wonders if this will be the last words they speak to each other.

“I will endeavour to do your lessons justice,” he says. Then, “Farewell.”

She waits for the title, but he doesn’t speak it. She hopes for her name, but his prolonged silence tells her she’s hoping for naught.

Then he turns to walk back to the manor, leaving her by the stables for what might well be the last time, and of all the things racing through her head, Marian wonders why his reluctance to say her name is what disappoints her the most.

 

* * *

 

_1917_

_No word on your falconer. They’re not in New York, unless my sources are holding out on me. (Or his Master’s an evasive bastard)._

_I’m sorry._

The letter sits in her hand, and Isabela’s signature seems a cheerless thing, despite its elaborate scrawl across the bottom of the page.

She doesn’t know what she expected to hear, but disappointment sits with the weight of grief in her chest. There’s been no letters from Fenris, though he hadn’t explicitly promised to write, only said he would try, but she can’t help but wonder why. The name of his employer sits, an almost heavier weight than her sorrow, and with it follows an anger that surprises her, though she has nothing to accuse him of – no proof of ill treatment, or that he’s somehow keeping him from writing.

“Marian?”

The letter crumples between her fingers, and she’s quick to wipe her eyes as she turns to the doorway where Bethany lingers. From the look on her face, her smile isn’t even close to fooling her sister, and she relents with a sigh, white-knuckled grip loosening around the paper.

Knowing better than to wait for a verbal invitation, Bethany lets herself inside, closing the door behind her. “No word?”

“There’s word,” she says, but doesn’t proffer the crumpled letter.

Bethany offers a look that is all her brother. “Not Isabela,” she says pointedly. “Your paramour.”  

She supposes she should be surprised. She’s more surprised when she finds that she isn’t. “Did you talk to Varric?”

Bethany takes a seat on the bed. “No,” she chirps. “I followed you. I figured it was the only way to get answers. Carver was so sure it was Anders, but he’s never been the most perceptive.”

Marian wonders how much strength it takes to speak of their brother with such ease, but isn’t fooled into thinking it’s as easy as it looks. A strong exterior is their father’s legacy, however differently they carry the weight.

And poorly attempted levity is another such legacy, but one that she is the sole inheritor of, it would seem. “What, just ‘Anders’ now?”

A dark brow lifts. “Don’t change the subject.”

Her sigh follows the fall of her head against the wall. “Alright,” she says at length. “And his name is Fenris, as you’re no doubt about to ask.”

Her sister smiles. “I wasn’t, actually, but thank you for that.”

Despite her previous mood, her laughter is earnest, and when smaller hands come to tug at her own, Marian allows herself to be pulled from her seat. “Let’s take a walk on the moors,” Bethany says. “I could use some fresh air.”  

“You hate the moors.”

A grin, bright as sunlight. Misplaced in their rough and ravaged country. “No, _Carver_ hated the moors. I was simply indifferent.”

Marian hums, but allows herself to be led downstairs. Bethany frets about which boots to wear, and Bodahn promises hot cakes and tea upon their return. She watches their interaction, and feels suddenly detached from herself – aware of what is going on, but also aware of how _wrong_ it seems, to continue living while the war claims lives that do not have the luxury of walks and afternoon tea.

A glance out the window shows her Sandal working in the flowerbed, and the sight prompts a smile. Not physically fit to enlist on account of the military physician’s orders, as ‘being a little odd’ wouldn’t quite have cut it, but she’s glad of the fact when he lifts a hand to wave at her. Not all lives lost, then.

“Ready?” her sister asks, but pulls her along without waiting for an answer, and Marian can only shake her head.

The crumpled letter is gone upon their return, but she doesn’t question its disappearance, nor does she ask why her sister seems oddly keen to keep her occupied. She knows the answer well enough, and she’s spent too long with only her own thoughts for company, waiting for letters from abroad. The war isn’t going to be any kinder to those who spend their days waiting. 

Perhaps it’s time to move on.

 

* * *

 

_1918_

She thinks she can’t possibly lose more than she already has, when the flu comes.

The war hasn’t yet released its grip when it rips through the country like a scourge, a death-knell that echoes in her household with greater ramifications than the military conscription that claimed her brother. 

It starts small, as all things do – coughs in the corridors, then fevers. Anders, hands already full with the war’s victims, recruits her sister for help, and word of it spreads quicker than the illness itself. Varric takes to bed, and the pub closes for the first time in Marian’s memory. Merrill follows suit, and Aveline’s husband, Donnic. But the severity of it doesn’t strike them until the death count begins to rise, rapid like a late spring flood, and there are more funerals held that first week than the first month of the war.  

She has not felt fear of this magnitude since before her brother’s death, but it sits with her now, on the bedsides of her household staff, but the sickness doesn’t touch her, and when even her sister falls ill, Marian wonders idly if it is her lot in life, to watch the passing of those around her, until she’s all that remains.

 

* * *

 

The candlelight flickers, throwing harsh shadows across a pallid brow. Bethany’s breathing is a laboured rasp at her elbow, but when it’s silence she fears, the sound grounds her, keeping her thoughts from going places they shouldn’t – three gravestones in the cemetery, waiting for a fourth.

“Go to bed.”

Looking up from the book in her lap, strings of words that won’t settle even as she reads them, again and again, Marian finds her sister awake.

“You’ve been sitting there for hours,” Bethany croaks. “Have you eaten at all?”

She doesn’t tell her that it’s hard to manage an appetite when the smell of sickness permeates every corner of the house. “I am where I need to be,” she says instead.

Dark brows furrow. Leandra’s Frown, but Bethany doesn’t seem to have the strength to maintain it. “Marian, I– I don’t think–”

“Hush. You’ll be fine.”

“Marian.”

“You’ll be _fine_. Now rest. I’ll be here.”

Bethany doesn’t protest, and the frown slips from her brow. Even something as small as conversation seems strenuous, and the thought is a foreboding weight where it sits on her shoulders. Her strong and healthy sister, who’d dance through the night if she could. It’s hard to watch her now, unable to so much as raise her head from the pillow.

She knows where it will end – Anders had all but confirmed it, on his last visit. But she doesn’t tear her eyes from the sight. She doesn’t know if there’d been anyone at her brother’s side when he’d died, but she won’t let Bethany go alone, just to protect her own heart.

The book sits, a fruitless distraction, and she doesn’t read another word that night.

 

* * *

 

She has been Marian, for so long. She is Marian still, when the flu finally claims her sister, and more servants than she can count, until all that’s left is herself, Bodahn and his boy, and the old cook’s daughter, Orana. And she becomes _Hawke_ , stern of brow and old beyond her years, grief’s grey streaks in her father’s dark mane and too wistful to walk on the moors in the dawnlight.

The flu didn’t take everything – the pub is still open, Varric and Merrill back on their feet, but their recovery does little to lessen the loss of her sister. Hawke doesn’t stop by the pub for weeks after this funeral, keeping instead to the house and her own company. Bethany’s bedroom sits untouched, the damp sheets from her confinement changed to crisp, new ones, and if she looks at it long enough it’s as though no one ever slept in it.

It’s that thought that finally drives her out of the house, a desperate need to be away from the tomb-like atmosphere left by war and sickness. She doesn’t bother finding proper boots, and doesn’t call for Bodahn for a warmer coat – summer is a pale memory now, and there’s a chill in the air as she makes for the moors, desperation in her step and heart pushing up her throat.

Then she rounds the corner of the stables, and the sight that greets her has her staggering to a stop, anguish forgotten as surprise drops from her tongue with an expelled breath.

“Fenris.”

He looks the same, vest and breeches and a bird on his arm, as though no years have passed in this pocket between realities – their spot behind the stables. For a moment, she can almost convince herself of the fact, that there’s been no war, that Carver and Bethany are still alive and waiting back at the house, and that he’d never left.

But she knows the truth with her next breath, and the weight that sits on her heart. But for all her losses he looks at her like he did, as though she’s still the same as she was, and he doesn’t ask, though she knows he must have heard.

It’s Pip who accompanies him this morning, and Hawke knows not to ask even before she sees the flicker of grief in his eyes.

“The years have been hard,” is all he says, and she’s surprised to find there is still sorrow left within her to mourn the birds. Her losses have piled so high she’d thought she had nothing left to offer, should Death come knocking again.

“So,” she says, when the silence has stretched long enough to border on awkward. “You’re back.”

She doesn’t know what she expects from the words. Affirmation is redundant, and he doesn’t owe her an explanation, no matter how much she feels she deserves one. As it is, Hawke is too tired to add his absence and lack of letters to her pile of grievances.

Which is why it’s a relief when he doesn’t bring it up, and instead of answering, simply holds out his arm. Pip watches, a silent invitation in inquisitive eyes. An offer of reclaiming something of her old life, if only this one small thing, but Hawke grabs it with both hands.

Her fingers shake, with some strange anticipation that takes her by surprise, but his hand is on her elbow, fingers curled in a sure grip, and she feels the warmth of his touch seep through the fabric of her shirtwaist. And he says nothing of her state – nothing to stir the careful calm she’s wrapped about herself. They don’t talk about America, or his missing letters, nor does she ask if the flu has left him with someone to mourn.

Pip flies, and her hands tremble, but she finds her breath again with the swoop of dark wings, and Fenris’ keening whistle. She doesn’t forget, not for a moment, but she finds a remnant of a once carefree joy, dredges it up from deep within her where she’d thought it long lost, and for now it is enough.

He leaves her with a lingering look, and as the day crawls by Hawke tries to hold on to that brief, happy feeling, but it’s hard, the ceiling of her too-large house pressing down on her where she sits, tucked against one of the windows facing towards the back garden. She tries to piece together the small things she’s left with – Fenris’ return, the sound of Bodahn’s steps on the landing, and Orana’s soft hum from the kitchen – weaving the tatters to a patchwork whole. And she wills it to be enough, and with each painful breath she relaxes, brow pressed against the cool glass and shaking hands tucked between the folds of her frock.

She spends an hour by the window, looking out across the garden, until the size of the house isn’t quite so daunting, and she can walk the corridors without fearing the ghosts.

 

* * *

 

“He’s back?”

Hawke’s glass is untouched, but Isabela doesn’t reach for it now. Home from her journey as well, there are more shadows in her eyes than she has explanations for, other than ‘spent a week on the brink of death, would rather not repeat the experience’ and ‘America got old’.

“So it seems.”

“And?”

Hawke supposes she could have laughed once, but Isabela’s intrigue only saddens her now. She shrugs. “And life goes on.”

Another time and her friend might have pushed for more details, refusing to believe that’s all there is to the story, and so Hawke is surprised when all she offers is a level, “Why are you so afraid?”

She considers refusing – considers blaming her unwillingness to act on something other than her own cowardice, but finds it pointless. She’ll convince no one, least of all herself.

Her fingers curl around the glass. She doesn’t answer Isabela’s question, and even if she knows the words, she swallows them with her drink.

 

* * *

 

She’s keenly aware of her siblings’ passing, but it takes a grey morning picking her way out the back door of the kitchens for Hawke to realize there’s no one left to hide their meetings from – no sharp ears and sharper eyes, inquiring of her whereabouts.

She’s been aware, but she hadn’t wrapped her mind around it fully, what it meant for them to be gone – truly _gone_. And the knowledge leaves her breathless, a walking spectre as she shambles across the grounds. She imagines her brother, and the letter from France. _No body to reclaim._ Empty condolences and an empty grave. She thinks of her sister, the sickly paleness of her brow and the rasp of her dying breath – her entire household confined to their beds, from which only three of them had risen.  

And she wonders, then, if she’d dreamed it all – if their last meeting had been an illusion, conjured by an exhausted mind driven to insanity by loss.

But she rounds the corner and there he is, no bird on his arm today but a book tucked beneath it. One she’d lent him years ago, before the war and before the flu, and she recognizes the leather-bound spine as her sister’s favourite – one whose disappearance she’d lamented on more than one occasion.

It’s such a small thing, but it roots her heels to the soggy ground. Her eyes follow the line of his arm, towards his shoulder, picking out the slight creases in his shirt and the patterns of his vest. Small things, such unbearably _small_ things…

She meets his eyes, and finds a question in them, a silent darkness in the summer green, like the shadows of wings in the grass. And she looks at his skin, tan under the fall of his pale fringe but _hale_ , flushed from the morning chill and not a fever burning him to cinders from within.  

And she feels then, near overwhelming relief that the flu didn’t claim him as well.

The look on her face provokes a frown. “Hawke–”

She kisses him with all her grief, hands fisting in his hair with a frustration that finds its way through the cracks of her composure, and damn her for waiting so long – damn her for choosing cowardice over the chance that he might harbour even an ounce of the feelings that she’s carried for so long, and that are now too much to contain.

But she has her answer a moment later, when the book drops to land at their feet, and then he’s gripping her elbows, not to push her away but to pull her closer, and her relief is even greater than her regret. It makes her bolder, fingers pressed against his head, pulling him down, her breath a gasp against his own–

“Not here,” he rasps, the words a rough caress against her throat when he draws away, enough for her to get her bearings, and remember where they are. Her estate lies a decent walk from the village proper, but her luck has not seen fit to bless her lately, and she won’t challenge it now.

“Alright,” she breathes, and – ever practical, and she thinks she might hear her father’s helpless laugh somewhere at the back of her mind – Hawke turns towards the stables.

Sitting empty since her parents’ days, a relic of the home she’d grown up in, it’s dry and secluded, the door yielding with ease to frantic fingers, and when she closes it the stillness settles like cotton in her ears, along with the realization of what she’s doing.

Fenris is looking at her now, watching for any signs of regret, no doubt, but Hawke has too many to count, and finds that the only one involving _him_ is the regret that her griefs had to pile so high for her to see beyond her fears. Silly, petty fears now that she’s lost nearly everything.

Not him, though, and it’s with that conviction she moves to take his hands. It’s cold, the late autumn chill creeping into the stable room, but his hands are warm, long fingers winding through hers with an ease that settles her racing heart.

He’s so difficult to read, so impenetrable sometimes she can only wonder, but when she meets his eyes now it’s to an expression of such naked _want_ it halts the words on her tongue. But she doesn’t drop her hands from his, and when his low “Are you sure?” slips into the quiet she can’t help the snort.

“I should think the setting made it quite clear. I don’t often go about dragging unsuspecting men into stables, however scandalous the local rumours would paint me.” When he doesn’t smile, she adds with a soft laugh, “That’s a _yes_ , Fenris.”

She gives his hands a tug then, taking a step back. They’ve mostly used the stables for storage, and there’s little comfort to be found in the hard ground, the sparse dusting of hay doing nothing to soften the cold stone. Fingers working at the fastenings of her coat, she lets it drop, and goosebumps rise in its place, along the naked expanse of her throat.

“Fenris?”

He lifts his eyes to hers, and she’s about to ask – she talks incessantly when nervous, a rather unfortunate habit – when he reaches out, fingers sliding along her jaw to tangle in her hair, and the kiss that follows is a languid thing. His mouth slants, a hot breath against her own, and her heels sink into the floor, hands gripping the front of his shirt when his teeth skim her lower lip. A moan rises in her throat, and she thinks she ought to feel self-conscious, but the sound that rings in her ears only spurs her on. Her dress feels too tight, constraining and awkward, and despite the chill she feels overwarm, skin flushed and fingers trembling with a fervour that makes her edgy.

Pulling his mouth from hers, Fenris spares a glance at her coat, a desolate heap at their feet. “The floor–”

“Not to sound impatient,” comes her gasp, cutting him off, “But right now I wouldn’t mind if you fucked me up against the bloody wall.”

It – does something, the words, crass as they are. More vulgar than she’s allowed herself to be, since she stopped being ‘Malcom’s ornery girl’ to _Lady Hawke_. The wary light in his eyes disappears, and for a brief moment Hawke wonders if he’s actually considering her words.

Then – “There.” She nods to a crate, waist level and sturdy looking. _Sturdy enough, hopefully._ At his look she shrugs. “What? I’m not choosy.”

He shakes his head, a breath that almost sounds like a laugh escaping, and she’s about to ask again when there are hands gripping her hips, and a startled noise tears from her lips as he lifts her up, to place her on the crate.

Hawke laughs, a giddy rush she hasn’t felt in ages coming to settle like warmth behind her ribcage. “You take your sweeping quite literally, I see.”

His hands are still on her hips, digging into the fabric of her dress. And she feels lightheaded with the need of him, the pressure between her legs growing until she’s squirming on the crate. _Impatient to a fault_ , her mother’s old scolding rings in her ears as Hawke reaches down, fingers bunching in the fabric, to tug the skirt of her dress up her legs. “Always knew there was a practical use to frocks.” And oh, if Leandra could hear her now…

Hands on her legs now, palms warm even through her thin stockings, and the hitch of her breath is loud in the quiet when he moves to peel them away. The cold knocks against her, but she forgets the discomfort in the brush of his hands, up the length of her legs and her thighs, pushing against the fabric until it’s rucked up around her hips and she’s exposed in a way that would have made Isabela proud.

The trail of his knuckles against her inner thigh lodges her breath in her throat, before he stops to splay his fingers against her skin, just shy of her sex. His eyes move along her form, awkwardly spread as she is, before settling on her face, flushed pink beneath her loose hair.

“You are beautiful, Hawke.”

She can’t quite keep the moan from slipping out. " _Ah_ ," she gasps, jolting as his fingers shift closer. “Indecency suits me, then?”  

His answer is a kiss, smothering her soft laughter, but her mirth is lost in the groan that rips from deep in her chest as he slides his hand up, pushing her legs further apart despite the stockings and undergarments still bunched around her ankles. She’s still wearing her boots, heels knocking against his hips, and when he flicks a thumb against her it’s all she can do not to collapse against the crate.

Holding herself up on her elbows takes more strength than she feels she has, and her breath is a ragged gasp now, frost on her breath though her hair is curling at her temples with sweat. There’s a question on her tongue – for him to get her bloody boots off so she can move her legs properly, but before she can speak them he dips a finger inside her, and all that comes out is an entirely incoherent whimper.

Raising her head to look at him shows him smiling, and when he pushes deeper Hawke thinks she might just come apart. There’s a feeling building in her chest, that it’s at once too much and not nearly enough. And she knows, then – knows that she doesn’t need a gentle descent, she needs to _crash_ , wings tucked against her in a soaring plunge that rips every coherent thought and sorrow from her breast, until she’s numb, blessedly numb, and all that’s left is him. 

Her decision having taken root, she pushes herself up, his fingers still inside her, and then her hands are at the fastenings of his breeches, clumsy and fumbling with her intent, and his laugh falls against her ear, a low and rumbling sound. Fenris extracts his hand, and for a split second the loss is near unbearable, but he assists in her pathetic attempt, finding buttons with ease, but it is Hawke’s hands that push the breeches down his hips.

She doesn’t want to beg, but she feels like she might, so close she can taste it, the tangy scent of them sharp on the cool air. His fingers are quick, working the fastenings of her boots before tugging them off along with the stockings. And when he grips her hips to pull her towards him she feels like she’s never wanted anything more than this.

Their positions are awkward, partially clothed and the crate hard beneath her, pushing against her tailbone with every thrust, but the feel of him inside her drives the complaints from her mind. His grip on her hips is bordering on painful, but she feels, she _feels_ and–

“ _Hawke_ ,” he groans, and the sound of her name – that longed-for weave of familiar syllables in his wonderful voice – sends her diving.

She comes, hands fisting in his shirt and obscenities hot on her breath, tears of relief gathering at the corners of her eyes, and it’s more – oh it’s more than she’s felt in months.

 

* * *

 

His Master is not a kind man, she learns, not from any word of his, but from the marks she finds against the press of her palms.  

Her sister would always say there were stories to be found on someone’s skin – laugh-lines, callouses and scars, to be read like a book. She tries to read Fenris’ story, but he stiffens when her touch comes to trace the scar tissue, the ragged protrusions that rise from his back, along his spine and shoulder blades.

She pretends she doesn’t notice, and moves her hands to safer places, the curve of his skull, and his damp hair slipping through her fingers. There are things she will ask, that she didn’t before. About him, and his Master. His absence and the secrets in his eyes. But it’s not a conversation she wants to have here, between old walls where the world doesn’t quite exist.

Fenris kneels before the crate, brow pressed against her stomach, and she feels his breaths as her own where she sits, legs still splayed and skirt bunched up around her hips. The euphoric rush of her release has left her mellow-boned and tired. But for once her exhaustion is due something other than grief, and she could have wept just from that fact alone.

 

* * *

 

She braves her fear of asking later, when he makes to go back. The sun has risen, too high for his liking, making him uneasy, and the words fall from her mouth without thought.

“What will he do if he catches you here?”

He doesn’t ask who she means, and he’s quiet so long Hawke wonders if he’s decided to just ignore the question altogether. But then, “He would not be pleased,” he says, but from the carefully chosen words it’s clearly an understatement.

“What does he have on you?” Hawke asks before she can stop herself. _Too much_ , comes the gentle scolding that sounds an awful lot like her sister. _It’s too much, too soon. Time, give him more time._  

Fenris shakes his head. “I must go,” he says. “My return is – expected.”

He pulls away, and leaves her by the stables, feeling more exposed than when she’d offered him everything, though she’s fully dressed now. And she watches him go, and doesn’t bother to pull her coat closer, to ward against the chill. Her own words are loud in her ears, but his silence is louder still, and for all her questions she has no more answers than if she hadn’t asked them at all. 

_What does he have on you?_

 

* * *

 

“Just run away with him,” Isabela says. The candles are burning low, and it’s long after closing, but Varric has not asked them to leave. Part of Hawke suspects he’d let her sleep on the floor if she asked – if she told him about the house; the yawning rooms and the sickly ghosts.

But she doesn’t have to tell Varric anything. The pub houses just as many ghosts, and she wonders if that’s why he welcomes their company, long past reasonable hours.

She stares at her drink, wondering if she’ll find better advice at the bottom of her glass. “It’s not that simple.”

“I think it sounds romantic,” Merrill says, softly from across the table. “Like in a novel.”

Isabela snorts. “Now you’ve just made it sound boring.”

“I don’t know, Rivaini. Sounds like prime literary material to me. Books like that sell pretty well these days.”

Hawke snorts. “Because if there’s anything that brings out the romantic in someone it’s war and death in abundance?”

Varric only shrugs. “Don’t underestimate what people will put up with just to escape. You wouldn’t believe the crap that gets published these days.”

“Why don’t you write one, Varric?” Merrill suggests. “You could be rich!”

Hawke proffers her glass with a warning look. “So long that it’s not about me.”

“Well you’d have to run away with him first,” Isabela laughs, slapping her on the back.

“Otherwise there’d be no story worth telling!”

 

* * *

 

She thinks about the words for a week, mulls them over in her mind and rolls them around on her tongue. The prospect is – intriguing, if reckless. Not impossible.

“Come away with me,” she says impulsively, one evening when they’re together. She speaks the words against his pulse; tastes the salt on his skin and the drum of his blood against her lips. They’re not in the stables now – one thing the years have left her is an almost empty house, and secrets are easier to keep in empty houses.

“Where would we go?” he asks, the query not near as playful as her own, and she hears in his hesitance what he’s really asking. _Where would I go where he cannot find me?_

Hawke doesn’t know the answer. She’s never known a home beyond the moors. All she knows is that she wants to leave, if that is what it takes to have him. “Fenris,” she says. “Come away with me.”

He doesn’t answer, but he pulls her close, hands moving up her sides with that quiet reverence, until his fingers curve around the cage of her ribs. Hawke stretches long as she is, humming a smile into the dip of his collar, to place a path of kisses up the cut of his jaw. He is familiar to her now, the stretch of his abdomen under questing fingers and the beat of his heart against her palm. And these are their hours, stolen in the dark.

It’s not a _yes_ , whispered against her hair with the same daring that’s burst to life within her, a renewed energy that makes her want to laugh at odd moments, and pick up her skirts and run like she did as a child.

But it’s not a _no_ , either, and she clings to the thought with all the determination she has left.

 

* * *

 

_1919_

The long year comes to an end, but the relief that follows their hard-won peace at the heels of the war doesn’t last long, and left in the aftermath, Hawke feels – hollow, bones too sharp beneath her skin and mind too heavy with worries. She’s not old – a few more years until she’s thirty, and she finds it strange, how she’d once considered herself _too old_ , back in a time where marriage had been the worst of her problems.

The country begins picking itself up again. Boys are sent home – those who’ve survived, anyhow, some missing more than just their youth. But the village breathes again, and evenings at Varric’s pub begin to see more visitors. If anything, the past five years have given everyone a good reason to drink. Hawke as much as anyone else.

She doesn’t see Fenris for two weeks, and she walks on the moors until she tastes blood on her breath, and her lungs burn from the cold. She walks to the edge of her property – sometimes even as far as Danarius’ orchard, before she turns back again. The privacy of her own house is one thing, but she won’t risk his reputation or his standing with his employer by seeking him out.

And so she waits for him to come to her, but though the days are short on sunlight the cold makes them longer, and the nights longer still, alone in her bed and the house holding its breath around her. She grows restless, until everyone feels it, and until she’s desperate enough to make another trip to the manor, if only to see if everything is alright. Better to endure Danarius’ company for an hour of tea if she can garner something as little as a word, than to spend another night awake, wondering.

But the morning she asks Bodahn to arrange for a message to be sent, is the morning she discovers something else entirely. 

“What?”

The teacup sits, slack between her fingers. Bodahn looks up from the plate of cakes he's placed at her elbow, a kind smile in a kind face, but Hawke feels it like a slap.

“The manor is sold, messere. Word has it they just packed up and left. Been gone some three days now.”

“Sold?” And she doesn’t bother worrying about what her voice reveals as she speaks the word.

Bodahn nods, and her hands warm as he pours more tea in her cup, but Hawke barely feels it, cold all over. “No one saw it coming. I had a chat with his groundskeeper last week and not even a word!” He shakes his head, and goes on to wonder if they’ll be getting new neighbours soon, that a manor of that size and repute isn’t going to be cheap, and would anyone afford it, with the state of the economy?  

Hawke listens, but the words don’t register. The cup burns, too warm in her hands, but she doesn’t put it down. 

It has to be some mistake. He must have heard wrong, surely. _Sold_ is so final. Sold means there won’t be anything to return to. When he’d left for America there’d at least been that, however indefinite their stay. Now she doesn’t even know where they’ve gone, if they have indeed left as Bodahn claims.

She doesn’t believe it – can’t make herself believe it, as she finishes her tea in tense silence. She pointedly refuses to accept it, as she laces up her boots and buttons her coat. There’s still a considerable layer of snow on the ground, dusting the tops of the towering firs, and the cold seeps through the soles of her boots as she walks, across the property and towards the very end, and further still, stubbornly holding onto her refusal as she crosses through the copse of trees and continues down the road.

She doesn’t believe it until she’s standing in the apple orchard, watching the bank of dark windows, and submerged in a quiet that rings even louder than death, snowflakes sticking to her lashes only to drip like tears down the flushed slopes of her cheeks.

 

* * *

 

Bodahn welcomes her back later, taking her coat with a smile, though there’s concern in his kind eyes now. “Had a good walk, messere?”

She wonders what good lying will do her now, after everything – what it will gain her to keep her spirits up, one more year, one more loss.

“No,” she says. “But I’ve got to keep walking, I suppose.”

Bodahn’s eyes soften, and she finds understanding in the press of his smile, now. “Right you are, my lady,” he says, as she turns to head for the stairs, his quiet reply trailing at her heels.  

“Right you are.”

 

* * *

 

_1920_

A war has come and left, and once again marriage is her foremost concern. She has no heirs – no one to inherit the estate, should something happen. And with the rapid decline of her family in the last decade, it’s not a thought she can easily escape.

Anders asks for her hand, and she is tempted, so tempted she almost says _yes._ But the hope that kindles in his eyes stills her tongue, and in her silence he finds his answer.

“It’s alright,” he says, and tries for a sheepish smile. “I knew it was a long shot.”

“I’m sorry,” Hawke says, and feels her loss in the words. She turns down comfort, a potential family to fill her empty house. Someone to keep her company when the winter grows long, and to walk with her on the moors in the spring.

Is it foolishness or stubbornness that makes her refuse happiness? She looks for the answer as he lets go of her hand, and she makes to leave the clinic.

“I’ll be here,” he says, when she’s at the door. “If you need me.”

She wants to say yes. Perhaps she would have, had things been different. Or perhaps he would have asked for her sister’s hand, had she been alive. But there’s no use thinking about what could have been, and she doesn’t have the heart to think of what could be – little running feet, and laughter in her empty corridors.

She doesn’t look towards the manor as she walks home, desolate still though it’s been well over a year. The apple orchard is ripe with the season’s fruit, but no one but the village children to pick them, braches hanging low with their burden. She takes walks there, sometimes, along the garden path, eyes looking to the skies.

She wonders what happened to Pip. But the years have been hard, and she doesn’t have to wonder long.

 

* * *

 

“How are you holding up, Hawke?”

She snorts into her glass. “ _Swell_. Isn’t it obvious?”

“You’ve looked better,” Varric supplies, and it lures a smile, if a bitter one.

“When you’re considered _unmarriageable_ , you stop caring.”

“You know, you say that, but you didn’t care even when you were considered marriageable,” he points out. “And you still looked pretty good.”

She cuts him a dubious look, and says, only half-joking, “You’re not going to proposition me too, are you?”

He barks a laugh, and fills her glass again. “What, you’re saying you’d say _no_? I come with a pub, you know.”

The scotch slips down her throat, the burn a pleasant distraction. She puts the glass down on the countertop with a bit more force than intended. “And I come with an empty estate, a considerable chunk of the village cemetery, and now, not enough sense to comb my hair. You should count your blessings for a ‘no’.”

Varric refills her glass without asking, and Hawke offers her wordless thanks. “I’m here if you need me, Hawke,” he tells her, as she lifts the glass to her lips again.  

 _I know_ , she thinks, and downs the contents.

 

* * *

 

_1921_

Spring arrives, bringing news.

“Pregnant?”

Aveline’s nod is stiff, but there’s hidden pleasure in the corner of her mouth. Her loose pants give nothing away, but Hawke doesn’t doubt the truth of her declaration.

“I thought I’d tell you in person, before breaking the news to the rest. Give you a head start.”

Hawke looks past her surprise; roots around for an expression that doesn’t reveal the envy that’s sparked to life behind her ribs.

Her efforts are met with a raised brow. “You don’t have to pretend for my sake, Hawke.”

The words _sting_ , but Hawke doesn’t deny the truth in them. Even so. “I _am_ happy for you,” she says. “You know I am.”

Aveline nods. “I know. I also know it’s not always easy. After Wesley I couldn’t stand the sound of the chapel bells. They reminded me too much of our wedding. Strange, isn’t it?”

Hawke considers her teacup. She’d never given much thought to children, until she’d imagined running away – starting over somewhere else, like her mother when she’d eloped with her father. Now the thought is relentless, a constant reminder of what she won’t have, and she feels not a small amount of guilt at putting her own grievances before her happiness for someone else. When did she grow so bitter?

She entertains the thought of what Aveline’s child will be like – headstrong, no doubt, and a little reckless. A wild head of russet hair and freckles like a poppy field across her cheeks – and finds in the image a flicker of joy that does not feel forced.

Perhaps there will yet be running in her corridors.

“So.” Hawke smiles, bringing the cup to her lips. “Whose idea was it?”

Aveline sighs, but it’s a desperately fond thing. “Don’t you start.”

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t know how she ends up being reeled into planting flowers with Merrill, but one late spring morning Hawke finds herself on her knees in the small flowerbed beneath her kitchen window.

“Are you sure you don’t want to borrow something? Your dress is so fancy!”

Hawke doesn’t mention that it is, in fact, her gardening dress, knowing full well Merrill is used to a different standard of living. Not to mention, nothing of Merrill’s could ever hope to fit her. Instead she smiles, and pats the upturned earth. “Nothing a good wash won’t remedy,” she declares, and Merrill’s eyes brighten.

A cry pierces the air then – so familiar it makes her heart leap, and her eyes shoot to the sky in time to catch the sight of wings spread against the cloudless blue as the falcon circles above their heads. And though she’s tried not to think about it, the sight provokes the memory of keen eyes and the silk of soft feathers against her knuckles. A weight balanced on her arm, and that hunter’s calm and patient grace.

_His fingers, warm against her skin. The gasp of her name against her collar._

“Oh, what a big bird,” comes the observation from her side. “I wonder if there are rabbits nearby.”

Her hands have stilled in the earth, flowerbed forgotten. She thinks of Pip, small and clever. Herne’s patience, and Diana, that dangerous elegance. All lost, now.

A hand covers hers then, pale and slender and fingernails dark from digging in the earth. But Merrill doesn’t ask what’s wrong. She doesn’t offer words at all, and Hawke is so grateful her chest aches from it. So many words, lately – so many explanations she feels exhausted just thinking about it.

“I think it might rain today,” Merrill says then. “Would you like to stay the night? It’s an awfully long walk back to your house. And I just cleaned the guest room – it’s not as big as you’re used to, of course, but it’s really cosy, and oh! I’ll make us dinner, and tea, of course. It’s been so long since I had guests! I hope you don’t mind a bit of mess, though…”

Merrill rambles, and Hawke breathes, the earth and the dampness on the air, and imagines a night in a house that isn’t as large as her own, nor as empty. It’s such a simple gesture, no offer of marriage or life-long companionship. Just – company.

And she finds her smile comes easy now, when she accepts.

“I’d like that very much, Merrill.”

 

* * *

 

_1922_

Garlands hang suspended from the ceiling, and there are flowers on every table, climbing over the edge of their pots, but Varric only smiles when she offers a raised brow, and it’s not much of a guess as to who brought all the daisies.

“A christening in a pub,” she declares instead, and when he offers a glass, declines it with a shake of her head. “Something not quite right about that.” But there are smiles on the faces of those gathered, and her own follows without thinking.

Varric leans his weight against the counter, surveying the room. “I’d like to say it’s the strangest thing to happen under this roof, but I’d be lying.”

Hawke knows better than to ask, and turns her attention to Aveline, approaching from the gathered crowd. Donnic is by the open door with some of the local officers, and the summer sunlight spills with gold across the old floorboards.

“Still awake?”

Shifting the white-wrapped bundle, Aveline offers a tired smile. “With luck, not for much longer.”

Hawke grins. “Any regrets yet?”

A snort. “Only that I let Varric talk me into having the celebration here.” Glancing down at her daughter, her expression softens.

“Marigold is a lovely name,” Hawke offers, glancing up to find Isabela sauntering towards them from across the room, before stopping to sling an arm around Aveline’s shoulders.

“Hello, sweetling.” She cocks her head. A dark brow quirks, sharp like a hawk’s wing. “A bit on the pale side isn’t she, big girl? Your side of the family I take it.”

“Donnic is part Irish, you know,” Aveline retorts, to which Isabela only snorts.

“Doomed from the start, then.”

Sinking back against her seat, Hawke allows the gentle bickering to become part of the pub’s din, finding respite in the familiarity of the voices and the laughter. It’s hard to remember old griefs with a peace like this, but in her solitude she feels hardened beyond her years, aware of the whispers that still follow at her back, even if she’s long stopped caring.

She hasn’t bothered to make a secret of the fact that she’d have liked to have children – there’d been no point in pretending. And words like ‘it’s not too late for you’, and ‘the offer still stands’ might tempt her away from her conviction, but as it is, Hawke would rather be alone than marry simply for the sake of children.

“Hawke,” Varric’s voice pulls her from the well-trodden path of her thoughts, but it’s not a glass he offers when she turns to face him. Instead he’s looking towards the open doorway, and when she moves to follow the line of his gaze, his own eyes wide beneath raised brows–

He looks like she remembers, is the first thing she thinks.

The second – a belated thought, slow in settling amidst the noise of the pub and the furious drum of her heartbeat – is that he’s back.

When it finally does settle, her breath has trouble catching up with her thoughts.

His arrival hasn’t prompted any visible reactions but her own, the pub’s patrons wrapped up in the summer’s soft heat and the festivities, but Hawke has no mind for them now, even as some begin to steal surreptitious glances her way.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” Fenris says, the words directed at Varric though he hasn’t taken his eyes off her, and Hawke doesn’t think she could have mustered a response if she’d tried.

Varric, thankfully, is quick to catch up. “The door’s open.” But Hawke feels his weighty gaze on her back, and knows the warning in the words even if she can’t hear them. _Door’s open until it’s not._

Her tongue feels sticky with the sweltering heat and words, so many words she doesn’t know where to begin and where to end. Four years and he stands before her, and she doesn’t know what to say.

“Could we – have a word?” Fenris asks then, casting a wary look about the room, aware now of the glances he’s garnering.

It’s bizarre, Hawke thinks. It’s a dream – she’ll wake up soon, in her cold bed. She’ll have breakfast, and the day will go on, and she’ll remember this in snippets, the green of his eyes like moor’s moss and the sharp cut of his vest.

A warm hand on her back startles her out of her staring, effectively pushing her off her seat, before Isabela claims it. “Go for a walk, Hawke. Get some…air.” She grins, but there’s a warning there too, in the hard lines of her mouth.

It’s feeling less like a dream now, and when she turns towards him she thinks he might be tangible – that she won’t wake up, if she were to reach for him. But the eyes of the pub are on them, and so it’s with sure strides that she cuts past him, making for the door. She doesn’t ask him to follow – it’s implied, written in the stiffness of her shoulders and the press of her mouth; her refusal to meet his eyes.

The air outside provides no more refuge from the humid heat than the pub's interior, but she hikes up her frock and makes for the stone bridge curving above the river. With most of the village gathered at the pub, there are few people out in the street, but with a growing anger in her strides now, Hawke doesn’t think she would have had the mind to care if they’d all gathered around to watch.

She comes to a stop at the middle of the bridge, hands letting go of their grip on her frock, and with a breath declares, “I don’t know why you’re here.”

It’s – not what she’d prepared to say, but confusion and anger are old friends of her heart, and she’s been through too much to blindly accept happiness when it comes knocking now.

She turns to find him at the bottom of the bridge, having decided to give her some distance. The sunlight makes his hair seem more silver than white, and she tries to focus her gaze on where it falls against his neck, so as not to meet his eyes.

Several heartbeats have passed, and when he doesn’t make any indication that he’s about to explain, she pushes forward. “Why are you here, Fenris?”

To her surprise, he doesn’t hesitate now. “You are here.”

Her traitorous heart makes the decision to leap, and Hawke lets out a frustrated breath. “I am,” she agrees. “I have been, while you’ve been gone.” Then, with words slightly more acerbic than she’d intended, “And where have you been, exactly?”

His brows draw together. “It’s – a long story.”

Evasive answers, and she doesn’t know why she’d expected anything else. And if he won’t tell her where he’s been, it’s unlikely he’ll tell her why he left in the first place. At his Master’s whims, she suspects that much, but all her questions have ever given her are more questions, and she doesn’t know if she has the strength to keep asking.

But something burns in her throat, pushing up towards her tongue. A fear she’s dismissed as ridiculous on so many occasions, but never been able to purge completely from her thoughts.

She doesn’t know if it is desperation or some form of self-deprecation that makes her ask, "Was it that bad? What we had?” _Was it not worth fighting for?_

His expression pulls together, sharply as though she’d slapped him. “ _Hawke_.” And the hurt he doesn’t even bother to hide makes her regret speaking the words – regret voicing the fear she’s kept to herself for so long with no one to share it, not even Varric. She finds no pleasure in his reaction, though she’d once imagined she would, when she’d lain awake, listening for ghosts and wondering _how much more_. How much more is she to take before it’s enough?

When she hasn’t said anything, Fenris sighs. “You asked me once, what he had on me.”

She tries not to show her surprise – she’d let go of the hope that he’d bring it up. But she nods. She remembers her own words, and his silence. The silence, more than anything else.

“My sister,” he says then.

A breath pulls loose. “You have a sister.”

Fenris nods. “And a debt. I…have not been a free man.”

She makes note of the past tense, and wants to ask about it, but doesn’t. That’s not what he’s telling her now. “You couldn’t have left on your own?” But she reads the answer in his eyes even before he shakes his head.

“My life has not been mine. I am – sorry I left without telling you. I was not given much choice in the matter.”

The words are earnest. Not pleading, for she’s never known him to plead, but there’s a petition for forgiveness in them, clear to her ears. And there are questions pushing past her carefully composed calm; questions about his sister, and her role. Had she lived at the manor? And what had been the nature of his debt to Danarius?

But something in his expression tells her now is not the time, and so she tucks them away for another day. She tries not to linger long on the hope that there’ll be another day, now that it’s taken root, quite despite her better judgement.

"So are you a free man now?”

Fenris nods, and when he doesn’t offer an explanation, Hawke asks, “Do I want to know how?”

The look he gives her is answer enough, but that doesn’t mean she’s done asking. Not about this, if what he brings is danger to her door. “Are there people looking for you?”

“Not anymore.” Seeing her frown, he adds, “By official records, I met my demise in the trenches.”

The mention leaves a sting – the years have not yet completely closed the wound of her brother’s death.

“It was the best option at the time,” Fenris continues, no doubt aware of the implications. “I know how it seems.”

She doesn’t know why she keeps asking questions. Perhaps because he’s actually answering them, for once. “Where is your sister now?”

Fenris takes a step forward, and when she doesn’t budge, follows with another, up the cobbled stones of the bridge until he’s standing before her. “She is in New York.”

“And you’re here.” It’s not a question, this time.

He’s close enough to touch, inches from her hands where they hang, limp at her sides. But he doesn’t move to take them. Instead he merely watches, eyes bright with answers she hasn’t asked for.

“You know why I am here, Hawke.” 

She swallows thickly. Some foolishly stubborn whim of her younger days makes her want to deny him. It’s been years, and she’s too old to find thrills in the mystery that had intrigued her so on their first meeting.

But he’s before her now, and they’re not hidden away behind the stables, or walking the moors with their eyes on the sky. It’s not a private thing, this meeting, or at least it won’t be after today, and even Varric can’t keep so many tongues from wagging. And she knows why he’s here, of course she does. And she knows what he wants, though he hasn’t spoken the words out loud.

And for the first time she’s so acutely aware of her own unhappiness, Hawke is dead certain of what she truly wants.

“I should like to employ a falconer,” she says, when the silence has grown long as the trees’ shadows against the cobblestones. “I hear birds are good company.” She draws a breath. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone with that particular set of skills?”

His laugh is breathless disbelief, and she marvels at the softness of the sound. “Is it a live in position?” he asks, and she spies that longed-for humour that lurks beneath his words.

And Hawke smiles, tongue pressed against her cheek, feeling ten years younger and heart a hundred pounds lighter. “That depends.”

A raised brow. “On?”

“It’s something of a permanent position. Think you’d be up for it?” _No running, this time._

His fingers come to cradle her face, but she doesn’t start at the touch, though it’s been long since she last felt anything so intimate. The pad of his thumb moves to push away an unruly strand of hair, curling damp against her brow. And she sees in his eyes, the fine-drawn lines of his face, that she is not the only one who has felt their separation keenly.

“You don’t have to ask.”

The balmy heat is a haze, and she feels removed from the world. And when he leans to kiss her she doesn’t think of prying eyes and the trailing susurrus of scandal that’s been her lot for so long. The rumour mill will churn either way, but at least here she’ll be happy, if talked about.

Warm fingers curve against the back of her neck, to tilt her head, and the next kiss is a sigh, an _I-am-home_ to fill empty rooms with promises that feel anything but empty.

And for the first time in long, cold years with War and Death her closest companions, the shackles of her losses binding her to a fear of moving on, Hawke feels _free_.


End file.
